#11: Midsommar Wrap Up
Pun Intended
I hate this. I’m barely in June mode. How is it already August? My summer bod isn’t ready!!!
I’ve been on a bit of a Substack slump lately, due to external factors (full-time job with benefits plz)… And also just being a lazy person.
Getting back on the wagon, I wanted to start by sharing a few things I’ve gotten into and greatly enjoyed over the past few weeks of July and August.
Competitive Melee
I’m not really into sports. I have my teams - New England gang rise up - and I watch them when they do good, I know the basic plays, the rules, what have you. But not much about that. I don’t pay attention to the draft, college sports. An extravaganza of knowledge I just don’t care about.
And then I found Competitive Smash Bros., and I got it.
eSports at large is also something I don’t pay much mind. A collage of incoherent screens and keyboard mashing. I didn’t have much to latch on to. Smash Bros. is a different story. Nintendo’s signature crossover fighting series has been a staple of my childhood since I could remember. Like most others, my first introduction was Super Smash Bros. Melee for the GameCube. I could not put it, nor its sequels, down. I knew a more extreme base existed, and a few clips would cross my timeline back in the day.
But one day there was me, frolicking my way through my college campus doing god knows what, when I saw a strange sight out of the corner of my eye: A large group of people, of all demographics and backgrounds, hunched around a series of hundred-pound brick TVs playing Melee, which at that point was nearly 20 years old. The screens displayed magic. High-octain, intricate movement of beloved mascots like Mario, Yoshi, and Samus among others the likes of which I have never seen.
I had to know more, which led me to The Smash Brothers documentary, where the base origins of the competitive scene were laid out. Exploiting game mechanics, friends in basements and hotel rooms hollering, the rise of a new dawn of gaming. Practically, a renaissance unfolded before me. And my god, the stories. The many obscure sagas of the scene hold as much dramatic weight as the rise and fall of sporting’s greats. Michael Jordan, step aside, we got the Era of the Five Gods; the subsequent rise of Leffen, "the “Godslayer”; aMSa, the Yoshi that could; the modern fight for #1 between Zain and Cody Schwab. And so many small moments of absolute glee, from the infamous pop-offs of Hungrybox, one of the gods, and the tales of players who used the game as an escape from trauma and poverty, and found a new family. Once the gates open, you cannot get enough.
Osamu Dazai
Sad boy hours for real. The well-read readers of this are likely familiar with Japanese writer Osamu Dazai. Often you will find him in talks of being among, if not the seminal Japanese author. The tragic novelist, most active during and in the immediate aftermath of World War II, painted with his words a frightening, hollow world where the individual mortally feared and could not understand the state and expectations of the world.
I have recently read his semi-autobiographical No Longer Human, published shortly before his death, and The Setting Sun, a harrowing tale of the downfall of low-level aristocrats in the postwar Japanese countryside.
His two most popular works are windows into an unknown reality, onw plagued with fear of people, places, and things, aspects Dazai struggled with in his personal life. The works are truely timeless into the examination of the lonely individual hiding behind a series of placating masks that inevitably wither the soul.
So long story short, not for the faint of heart.
Trap
On a more fun note, the Shyamalanaissance is in full-swing, babyyyyyy!
As of writing this I just got out of the M. Night Shyamalan’s latest thriller, Trap, starring Josh Hartnett as a serial killer who evades a police ambush while taking his daughter to a concert.
Shyamalan is, in a word, a controversial director. Ever since he came out swinging wit his monumental horror The Sixth Sense, he has experienced a series of ups and downs in his career. The immediate follow ups to Sense: Unbreakable (masterpiece), Signs, and The Village, while commercially successful, perplexed audiences and critics alike. And oh, boy, the middle of his career couldn’t even hit mid. The center of the earth, maybe. We all can agree that there had never been a Last Airbender movie. Right?
He knew he needed a change, so he took a huge risk in financing his own movies, and focusing on stories that relied on smaller budgets. The real resurgence was Split, and he has been pumping out schlock B-movie bangers ever since. The best part? The artistry is still there.
And by golly, he is cooking in Trap. His pivot to self-financed low-brow has come to a pinnacle. A contained, super-tight script set in (mostly) a large single location. He lets Harnett’s character run along like a kid in a playground. And every so often, there would be the kinda shot sprinkled in that would have me bumping my fist.
If Josh and M. Night continue teaming up in the future, I will be a happy man.
Midsommar Director’s Cut
I told you pun intended. I love Ari Aster. And his movies. The searing family horror of Hereditary, the fuck-you-comedy-horror odyssey of Beau is Afraid, and of course, Midsommar, his deliciously psychedelic folk horror.
A24’s bluray of the Director’s Cut of the 2019 movie had been gaining dust on my shelf since I bought it. Until, that is, enough was enough.
I really cannot say anything without giving away the additions to the nearly 3 hour cut, but I can say, despite its runtime, it runs a lot smoother. Though I have problems with the additions to Christian (Jack Reynor), I think seeing the film closer (but not quite) his full vision is fascinating.
Though much of it seems unnecessary, I’ll take any Ari I can get in these trying times before his contemporary western, Eddington.